The Ledger
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Stebbings: Sequoia and top VCs announce misleading blended valuations
“The amount of Sequoia rounds where it's like, oh, you know, X raises money from square five billion. Trust me, Sequoia got in at one, but they just club it together and then announced the sum and then the latest valuation. And it's just very misleading.”
Grady: 10 years of Sequoia data shows consensus doesn't drive startup outcomes
“So we have actual data on this going back to 20 14 where we started recording the votes numerically on every single investment. So we have about 10 years worth, which believe it or not is not conclusive because there are so few outliers that have emerged even …”
Bouaziz claims Sequoia Capital invested in every competitor of Deel
“Sadly, they invested in every competitor you can think of.”
Jason Lemkin: Benchmark is no longer in top VC conversations on X
“If you look on social media, benchmark isn't listed the way Andreessen and Sequoia was like it was a generation ago. It's just not, does it matter? Harry, Harry's built a big brand. He's concerned. It matters. You could argue both sides, but when the industry …”
O'Driscoll: Sequoia missed Facebook because Zuckerberg feared Mike Moritz replacing him
“Part of the reason that Sequoia aren't in Facebook is residual frustration with Mike Moritz for prior, you know, prior situations where they had in fact made a CEO change”
O'Driscoll: Sequoia abandoned billions in value exiting China
“We saw very intelligent investors, Sequoia, people like that get out of billions of dollars Of value because they just wouldn't want to be there.”
Ehrenberg: Top VC Firms Will Maintain Premium Fees Due to Outperformance
“It's going to be just like hedge funds. You know, look at Sequoia. The best firms charge premium fees and will be able to get it because on an after fee basis, they still outperform.”
Stebbings: Sequoia's scout program missed Series A and B rounds
“Actually there was a big problem, which is like their data monitoring wasn't what it could have been. And so they missed a lot of A's and B's and then did the C's of companies that they did scout deals in. And so ultimately, yes, they got great returns on the …”
Gerstner: Sequoia's early Figma investment yielded 100x while late-stage yielded 2x
“If you look at the difference between the Sequoia round in Figma or the durable round in Figma, right? It's the difference between, you know, having a hundred plus X outcome and a two X outcome.”
Leone: Sequoia portfolio companies have created $6.5 trillion in market value
“We have been responsible somewhere around six and a half trillion of partnering opportunity, meaning the companies with which we partner have generated six and a half trillion of market cap. About a quarter of the NASDAQ, God knows how much of the NYSE in Hong…”
Gupta: Sequoia Capital requires unanimous partner approval for all investments
“This is reinforced by things like unanimous decision-making, which means we all need to be bought in when we decide to partner with a company.”
Bahat: Very few multi-stage VCs historically produce top seed-stage winners
“We did an analysis looking at the top company performers. And what you see is that since the era that seed funds have existed and who funded them at the seed. And what you see is that some of them were funded by seed funds, first round true others funded some …”
Only Peter Fenton and Jim Goetz achieved multi-billion consumer and enterprise wins
“That's a funny statement, because I think in the modern era, if you go back, call it the last 10 or 15 years of venture capitalists, there are only two that I can think of who have had multi-billion dollar consumer outcomes and multi-billion dollar enterprise …”
Consensus VC decisions will decline as conviction investing and LP directs grow
“We're going to see three pretty basic models emerge for how decisions are made, all the way up from LPs down, down to small seed funds. And the three buckets are going to be consensus-based decision-making, and that's every fund that, you know, has pretty much…”
Top VC firms will be forced to adapt to new funding models
“Sequoia, Benchmark, Andreessen Horowitz, they're not going away anytime soon. This isn't like, we're out to beat them and kill them. Not in the same way Airbnb is not going to delete hotels overnight. It's going to change how hotels work. I think that's a bett…”
Soltero: Sequoia wrongly called Hyperic a product in search of a market
“Maybe that comment from Sequoia had really left a mark, this idea that, that they thought that Hyperic was a product in search for a market, which of course hundreds of millions of dollars of years later, or hundreds of millions of dollars later, I'm happy to …”
Stebbings: Etched Raised $700M at a $21B Valuation
“Speaking of high IP businesses, literally, like, three weeks ago, Etched raised at ten billion. Today, they've announced they've raised seven hundred million at twenty-one billion from Jane Street, Kleiner, Sequoia, Andreessen.”
Asparouhov: Tier-one VC firms Benchmark, a16z, and Sequoia ousted founders recently
“There are firms, tier ones that I mentioned, Benchmark, A-sixteen Z, Sequoia, et cetera, all have examples of sort of founder oustings in the past sort of decade.”
Stebbings: Top VC brands give startups extra runway to achieve product-market fit
“Because Sequoia and Greylock have such great brands, they will generally, 90% of the time, always get more money, and because they get more money, they have more time to get product market fit.”
Grady: Sequoia made $1B+ more on Palo Alto Networks by holding longer
“Or Palo Alto Networks, where we went into that IPO with the exact same ownership position as one of our co-investors. We ended up generating More than a billion dollars more than them because we were more patient, and so sometimes it really pays off.”
Lixandru: Sequoia operates US and Europe as one unified capital pool
“We changed our name, actually. It's USC, so US Europe, as one team, one pool of capital”
Frankel: Sequoia omits brand on scout program to eliminate signaling risk
“By the way, to Sequoia's credit, they've never used the Sequoia brand on their scout platform, and I think that that actually is A fantastically respectful thing to do to founders, because it eliminates the signaling risk of why didn't Sequoia follow on, and t…”
Salur: Mike Moritz personally invested in Getir before Sequoia Capital did
“He was the first to put, and he invested his own money. Sequoia came later”
Sequoia Led DoorDash's Series C as a Flat or Down Round
“The Series C that Sequoia decided to lead was quite hard. I think the company had thought that because it had doubled or tripled GMV, and the unit economics was getting better, that the valuation from the B to the C would be double or triple, and in fact, it e…”
Levine: Sequoia's seed deals in Airbnb and Dropbox are history's best
“Two of the best deals of all time were seeds by Sequoia. I think an initial almost 600,000 dollar investment in Airbnb and a million dollar investment in Dropbox to get very large ownership positions.”
Sequoia Capital Invests More Money Outside California Than Inside
“Today, Sequoia, and many of the other venture firms, they invest more money outside of California than inside of it”
O'Driscoll: Kleiner and Sequoia paid nearly $100M post-money for pre-revenue Google
“The single most successful venture investment in the last probably 20 years was done in 1999, and it was done at an absurd valuation. That's Google. Kleiner and Sequoia paid almost a hundred posts for a pre-revenue company There was doing a search engine in 19…”
Sequoia Won Citadel Securities Deal Through Partner's College Relationship
“Constantine Bueller my partner Helped us lead the investment in Citadel Securities, Ken Griffin's company. They had never taken outside capital. The reason we were able to invest is Constantine built a relationship with Ken since he was a student. He had been …”
Stebbings: Sequoia leads funding for Valar Atomics at a $6 billion valuation
“Valar Atomics triples to six billion dollar prices Sequoia bets on nuclear for AI. It's a three-year-old small modular reactor company raised at two billion, now Sequoia leading around at six.”
Stebbings: Chai Discovery raised $400M at $3.8B valuation
“Four hundred million at a 3.8 billion dollar valuation led by Index, Kleiner, Sequoia, Dimension.”
Stebbings: Accel and Sequoia raised $4B and $7B AI growth funds
“Excel adds four billion leaders fund to follow into hot AI growth rounds. Sequoia four days ago raises seven billion dollar growth round growth fund.”
Sequoia took a 25% stake in Klarna at a $100M valuation
“They took a 25% stake at a hundred million dollar valuation, right? Yeah, at a hundred million dollar valuation.”
Stebbings: Open Evidence raised at $12B valuation led by Thrive and DST
“Open Evidence raises at twelve billion dollars, labbed by Thriving DST. It's a 12 x valuation step up to where they raised at a billion dollars from Sikora at the start of the year.”
Stebbings: Gong has surpassed $400M ARR and a $7B valuation
“The company has raised over six hundred million dollars from some of the best, including Sequoia, Thrive, Salesforce, and more, and Gong has surpassed Four hundred million in ARR, and serves thousands of customers, including multiple Fortune hundreds, and is v…”
Stripe CFO Will Gaybrick initiated acquisition talks with Airwallex in 2018
“Will Gabrick, the CFO at the time I think now he's CPO, he reached out through Sequoia and he said, just want another, have a conversation to see what you guys are up to.”
Stebbings: Clay Completed $1.5B Employee Secondary Transaction Led by Sequoia
“Clay obviously did this kind of billion and a half dollar priced transaction. I think it was employees secondaries with Sequoia.”
Odoo completed a €500M secondary deal at a €5B valuation
“So it was five hundred millions of euros at a five billion valuation. It was Summit Partners, one of our earlier investors who sold to Sequoia Capital, BlackRock, Mubadala, and Capital G.”
Maples: VarageSale failed despite aggressive follow-on funding from Sequoia
“Verage sale. Sequoia aggressively followed and it didn't do well.”
Maguire: Moritz and Leone had opposite political views but co-led Sequoia for 30 years
“Mike Moritz and Doug Leone could not have more opposite political perspectives or more opposite personalities. They worked together for almost 30 years”
Grady: Sequoia invested $52M for 20% of ServiceNow at $260M valuation
“We invested fifty two million for 20%. And for anybody keeping track, that is two 60 post on twenty five million of ARR generating twenty million of cash.”
Grady: Figma had $4.6M ARR at Sequoia's Series C
“So the series C and Figma, when Figma had, I think, 4.6 million of ARR, that was not at all obvious, but Andrew had spent three years Studying the design market and had a real point of view.”
Vise Was Sequoia's Last Investment Before the COVID-19 Shutdown
“We were the last investment at Sequoia before everything shut down for the pandemic, like day before the global shutdown.”
Vise Raised Seed Extension, Series A, and Series B in Seven Months
“The seed extension was done in October of 2019. Our A was done in March, and our B was done in May.”
Corcos: Sequoia's Vernal and Andreessen's Jordan Read Every Pre-Meeting Document
“The people who were most engaged was Mike Vernal at Sequoia and Jeff Jordan and Andreessen. They read every document. Jeff actually even fixed some typos like deep in like a 50 page document.”
Figma was at $4M ARR when Sequoia invested at $400M valuation
“I remember when they, it's public, but they were at four million in ARR when Andrew did them at 400.”
Velez: Sequoia interviews job candidates top-down, starting with firm leadership
“The first thing that came to mind was the first interview was with the head of the firm, not with the youngest analyst. In most firms, you start from the bottom, and then you go up, and Sequoia is the opposite. You go from the top, and then you go down, and yo…”
Drew Houston: Sequoia's Mike Moritz closed Dropbox investment in one business day
“We met on a Friday. Pejman actually came with us to our pitch, which was apparently, which I learned later is extremely unorthodox. And then Mike Moritz, kind of the godfather of Sequoia came to our apartment on Saturday morning. We had a handshake deal on Mon…”